Scenes That Never Were
by Basser
Summary: The Master de-ages the Doctor to the body of a child during the Year That Never Was. Seven chapters from an abandoned story. Includes beginning, middle, and end of the year aboard the Valiant.
1. Chapter 1

_**NOTE:** These snippets were originally going to be parts of a larger, cohesive story outlining the events onboard the Valiant pretty much month-by-month and continuing onwards with a permanently de-aged Doctor. Several years of watching them collect dust, though (the first was written in 2009) and I've finally realised **I'll never actually finish the narrative**. So I've decided to go ahead and post these snapshots as a collection of little vignettes. Events are in roughly chronological order (the first three chapters follow each other directly) and the last chapter skips forward to what would have been the end had this ever been completed._

_**Many of these scenes come to a rather abrupt end**, so be warned you may have to use your imagination to fill in any gaps. (Alternatively, you could use your word processor! I claim no ownership over any of this so if an idea tickles your fancy please by all means continue it and toss me a link. I would love to read this as a proper story!) Also things get rather dark rather quickly. This is **not** a fluffy story. Enjoy!  
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><p>He breathes a low, shaky breath and tries to get used to this. His limbs quiver as he pushes himself to his feet, and meets the mirthful eyes which are now entirely too far above him. Nothing seems the right size—the table seems to tower over him, say nothing of the suddenly huge, looming enormity of the room itself. He stares, wide-eyed, and tries not to quail too obviously. Everything's just so <em>big<em>.

"Ohh, he's positively _adorable_," Harold Saxon coos, kneeling down before him with the air of one inspecting a newborn puppy. The wife smiles, her eyes tinged with just that little hint of weary insanity.

"Can we keep him?" she asks softly, a mad grin playing across her face.

"Oh most certainly." Saxon—no, the Master—when had he forgotten that? reaches out a hand to pat his head. The touch sends a pulse through his fragmented mind like black lightning; tinges of madness and anger and the harsh, unforgiving beat of drums, pounding, beating so loudly. The flood startles him and he stumbles back with a gasp. Koschei withdraws his hand as if burnt, a vicious scowl on his face. He blinks. Koschei, the Master, Saxon… so many names. He can't remember where one starts or ends or why it ever changed at all.

"Perhaps a bit of a time out first," the Master says, rocking back on his heels and standing up. The face is no longer amused; there's real anger hidden in the depths of madness. Saxon turns to the guards stationed by the door—their discomfort and fear is alarmingly palpable. Their tiny human thoughts tumble through his head like so much water. Something tells him to stop, to shut his senses and withdraw but he honestly can't remember how. "Find the brat a place to cool off," Koschei orders, the humans immediately springing to his command. _Less trouble as an old geezer…_ the thought is not his voice and not his mind and he reels where he stands. The Master whips around, and the thought is cut off with a sudden fury—the emotion kills the notion but the feelings make him dizzy. He grins loopily for a second, amused by his own turn of phrase. This seems to infuriate Koschei. The elder (_no, younger?) _Time Lord doesn't risk another touch, though. That's good, he thinks, no more drums. The drums made him nauseous.

As the guards clamp iron grips around arms he doesn't remember being quite so small, the Master sends him a purposeful wave of fury. He can't help his expression darkening along with the emotion, though it probably doesn't look half ridiculous on his tiny face. Tiny? When was his face tiny? He sags into the humans' hold and tries very hard not to think what they're thinking. Too many thoughts. Why can't he block them? He blinks slowly at his own body. Very small. His shirt is much too big. The jacket and pants were nice—he wished they hadn't fallen off. They had pinstripes. He liked them. Pinstripes. Thinstripes, winstripes… he grins again, then frowns. The humans are scared and helpless and so he is too.

"Find him some bloody clothes while you're down there!" Saxon calls after them irritably, trying to control the fury he's feeling over that brief loss of mental control. Lucy is afraid. This had been her idea… oh, he'll be so angry. Her vague panic is cut off as the door shuts behind them.

He feels nauseous again.

#-#

Jack does his best to grin haughtily as the guards unchain him. Really all he wants to do is cry with relief—he's been trussed up for days, can't remember when he last felt sensation in his hands. The expression he presents to the ever-present surveillance cameras is a devious smirk. Inside he is screaming.

"What's the occasion, boys?" Jack asks. No answer, as if he'd really been expecting one. He's dragged bodily down a corridor (which is good as he still doesn't trust his legs to do their work) and focuses on irritating his captors as much as possible. The power of annoyance—only thing he has left. It might cause one of them to slip out of that brainwashed, emotionless mask, and that's really all he wants to see at this point. Proof that someone else, at least, is human. "You know most guys would offer to buy me a drink first," he quips. No reaction. He sighs.

They stop in front of one of the faceless glass cells of the lower deck. Jack looks around with a slightly worried glance. He's seen prisoners here—terrified humans herded in and out like toys in boxes, experiment fodder for the maniacal Time Lord upstairs. Tonight, though, the cells are mercifully devoid of screaming civilians. Good, then, he won't have to watch more horrific deaths. Wrenching his thoughts from nightmarish memories sets him wondering at the reason for this sudden change of quarters. He's about to ask when the guard presses a button and the door slides open.

Before he can even throw a decent parting quip he's tossed bodily into the small space. Legs weak from captivity fold underneath him and he's left sprawled on the floor like an idiot. The door slides shut again without even an inkling of recognition for his entertaining display from the guards. The Doctor had mentioned that the Master had always been 'sort of hypnotic.' Understatement of the year, Jack thinks drolly.

Thinking he might want to get up sometime before his next inevitable death, he slowly attempts to hoist himself up on tingling arms. He only succeeds in rolling himself over, but being able to lie flat again is such a mercy that he gives up on anything further and just sighs happily. Bliss in the form of a hard metal floor. Endorphins from a million injured muscle cells flood his system, making him perfectly content to lie still and study the ceiling.

The Master seems to prefer modern-vogue to the old standby of bars and concrete. Tinted, bulletproof glass surrounds him in a roughly six-foot square, towering above like some sort of exceptionally bland skyline. Other than that, he knows a door with a keypad on the other side is probably somewhere near his feet. It's all dully uniform, grey, not much to look at and certainly not very homey.

Still, he's lying down, relatively comfortable, and that's far more than he can say for the last few weeks. A boring and minimalistic cell might as well be a palace at this point.

"Life's good…" he mutters half-seriously to the ceiling. This is a moment to be… well, if not relished, at least appreciated. A brief respite before that bastard Saxon arrives to treat him to some new and exciting death. Probably something new—gas, maybe. He hasn't had that yet. Jack eyes the vents above him and considers the merits of suffocation in a macabre attempt at humour. Better than drowning? What exactly does poison smell like, anyway?

His wandering thoughts are broken by a shuffle in the corner and a low, keening whimper. Startled, he quickly rolls back over to stare wildly at the far walls of his admittedly rather small prison. There. Huddled in the corner is a ball of cloth he somehow hadn't noticed before being shoved in here. It's… blue. And… shaking? With a jolt he realizes what it is. A little kid. Some child, dressed in plain shorts, body curled up in the fabric of a wildly oversized button-down shirt. He's briefly horrified, thinking this poor soul will be killed along with him this night, before recognition his and his eyes widen. Oh, no… _no, no, no_. He knows that shirt…

As if sensing his realization, the shirt rustles and a small, pale face peeks out from the collar. There's no mistaking the shock of brown hair, freckles standing out on near-white skin, and those wide, frightened doe eyes. _Oh god, Doctor… _

He's no more than five or six… a harmless child rather than a decrepit old man… and the poor thing's terrified. Jack feels his heart break as the familiar chocolate eyes widen at the sight of him, taking on an edge of panic and fear.

"Doctor?" Jack asks softly, still somehow unwilling to believe that his timeless and noble alien friend has been reduced to a child in the corner of a cell. He hauls himself to his knees and reaches a hand out shakily.

At his movement the boy starts as if shocked and presses himself into the corner, eyes locked on Jack. He starts to shake again. Jack shifts himself on rapidly-strengthening arms to lean toward his friend, thinking to at least draw the too-young Time Lord out of the corner he's so pitifully curled in. The blank fear in the boy's eyes makes Jack nervous. Those eyes aren't those of his friend— something's missing. They're too blank, too naieve. Why on earth has the Master even done this? It's not as if the Doctor had been much of a threat as an old man! And now to force his friend through another painful re-aging… he clenches his teeth in anger, suddenly furious. If Saxon's done any lasting harm to the Doctor, he'll—

As if reacting to Jack's decidedly vicious thoughts, the boy-Doctor gives a frightened yelp and hides his head under his hands. Eyes screwed shut the boy mutters something very quickly to himself in some sort of musical, chiming language. A lilting mantra, over and over… Jack is distracted from his anger long enough to listen carefully, trying to understand, hoping the Doctor might communicate with him. The words are too alien, a completely different language than any he's heard before and he doesn't hold much hope that the words will arrange themselves into something he can decipher. The TARDIS relies on her pilot to complete the translation circuit. He's fairly sure that the Doctor being reduced to the size of a human five year-old tosses a giant wrench in the working of that system.

The Doctor, despite his mantra of strangely chiming words, looks close to hyperventilating, and Jack quickly shelves his own worries and designs for revenge on Saxon in favour of figuring out a way to calm the boy down before he passes out. Not knowing whether he'll be recognized, or even understood, Jack nonetheless leans forward on shaky arms –-still not quite recovered blood flow— and attempts to provide some reassurance.

"Hey, Doc, calm down. It's me… it's just Jack." he murmurs softly, managing to sit up properly and move toward the not-child. The Doctor's chant falters for a moment and he opens his eyes to stare frightfully at Jack, huddling further back into the corner than should have been possible. Jack stops, anger washing through him again. In front of him is the last(-ish) of the powerful Time Lords, the Oncoming Storm, savior of the universe… reduced to a frightened child in the corner of a cell! He fights to keep his expression neutral as thoughts of the best way to gut the Master and destroy the paradox machine come to mind. Hang the Doctor's warning to wait it out! The second he has a chance he's going to break out of here, find Saxon, and wring his little Time Lord—

Jack's violent thoughts are cut off as his cellmate screws his eyes shut again and cries out, hands over his ears as if to block out some impossibly loud noise. Without warning the boy keels forward with his head clasped between tiny hands, pained, and Jack instinctively lunges forward to catch him.

The effect is spectacular. No sooner do his fingers brush the skin of the Doctor's small hand than the boy jumps up with a barely-contained scream, wild-eyed and panting, as raw psychic energy of the kind Jack has only ever experienced in his long-past training in as a Time Agent is hurled his way. As he scrambles away from the sudden and unexpected burst of panicked, angry power, the Doctor yells again and backs away.

"Stop stop stop no, you're _wrong!" _the boy says, both audibly and telepathically as he stumbles backwards. Jack's ears register unintelligible Gallifreyan but instantly, disconcertingly understands the words as they're projected forcibly into his mind,_ "_you're wrong don't touch me I can't block it, I can't block _anything_!" the Doctor's small face is screwed up in pain as he finally hits the far wall and sinks down it, sobbing.

Jack is caught like a deer in the headlights, frozen where he'd initially backed off. '_You're wrong,' _those words again, now with all the meaning the Doctor attributes to them directly beamed into his mind. Wrong, evil, bad, unnatural, terrifying. He feels his heart pounding and a profound sense of hurt. The older, properly-aged Doctor hadn't been lying when he said the fear was instinctual. _Ingrained _into every temporal being's very existence, even. Obviously the Time Lord had been exercising a fair amount of control over himself as an adult; simply resorting to running, not looking at him, when _this_ was how he'd been feeling inside? Terrified out of his wits?

And just like that, suddenly, it clicks. The tiny cell, the lack of restraints or death threats… with a strangled gasp Jack realizes why he's been brought here— not for some new, exciting demise as he'd originally thought. No, he's a living torture device. His eyes widen in horror. '_I can't block anything…'_ the shrunken Doctor's own words finally register. Jack quickly stumbles up and does his best to move as far away from the hysterical, miniaturized Time Lord as possible, realizing the root of the boy's frantic state: Jack's mere presence discomforted a fully lucid, telepathically-shielded Doctor. To a wide-open mind it must be agony.

Thankfully the distance seems to calm his cellmate marginally, and the young Doctor settles back into muttering, trying to calm himself or build some sort of mental wall, Jack can't tell.

A few tense, near-silent minutes later and Jack is trying to figure out what he could possibly do to make this situation any less ghastly. He's trapped with a barely-coherent, shrunken version of his oldest friend, and his very presence is causing the boy pain. He tries in vain to push himself a little farther into the wall, face torn even as the Doctor begins to calm. The boy's ragged breaths come more slowly, his face relaxing somewhat until finally his eyes open.

His eyes… Jack stares. They're glowing. Faintly, but unmistakable, a golden light around the irises. The Doctor blinks, shaking his head, and the light is gone as quickly as it appeared, leaving Jack to wonder if he'd imagined it.

He's still staring, distracted, as the Doctor speaks;

"Rasillon, my head…" the boy groans. Jack's worried expression perks up immediately, hope flashing through him. Those short words had been _translated_ —not in some rough, quickly forced projection of meaning through raw telepathy— but properly reformed by the TARDIS. If she's managed to reconnect herself to her pilot then there's hope, he thinks, hope that maybe his friend isn't completely lost to him.

"Doc?" Jack hedges, excited but trying to remain calm, "Hey, you understand me? Do you know where you are?" Such stupid, simple questions… but he has to ask them, has to know.

The Doctor looks up with eyes that at least _seem_ lucid, glares at him rather woozily. "Of course I do," the boy answers. Jack sags a little in relief and grins, immensely grateful to be able to communicate with his friend without causing a panic attack.

"You scared me a bit there," Jack confides, not really sure what to say or ask in this situation and deciding he'll just wing it. He tries for a bit of humour, "man you can hit pretty hard with a psychic blast! Remind me never to challenge you to a game of Geldian Mind-war!" he exclaims, trying to barb the Doctor into informing him just how badly he would lose at _any_ form of telepathic contest with a Time Lord. _Come on, Doc, bitch me out like usual…_

Sadly the moment seems to have passed as all he gets in response is a rather blank stare. Jack's smile slips a few notches as the Doctor simply _looks_ at him. No notice of the playful jab, or really even of Jack himself.

After a few seconds, though, the Time Lord blinks, screws up his face again and rubs his temples as if trying to ward off a headache. Jack has no idea what to do and so tries to keep himself as still and non-threatening as possible.

" … Jack," the boy starts. Jack nearly faints with relief. The Doctor recognises him! Oh thank god, his friend hasn't been wiped clean by the Master's sadistic aging device. He barely manages to restrain a sudden impulse to run over and hug the boy. Memories of the terrified panic a simple touch had caused keeps him still, though, and he simply allows himself a quiet grin as the Doctor continues speaking;

"I'm not really… I'm… not… hmm…" the Doctor stops and trails off, looking faintly lost. He seems to catch sight of his own small hands and gives them a strange, puzzled look.

Seeing that the Doctor has become distracted, Jack attempts to continue the conversation. No way is he letting his Time Lord lapse into panic-mode again. He smiles and injects a bit of false cheer into his voice, "— you're not in possession of all your marbles?" he supplies not-quite-helpfully, hoping for any expression other than abject terror or blank bewilderment. Irritation, maybe. It's always been easy to irritate the Doctor.

It works— the tiny boy stops inspecting his own hands and gives Jack a disapproving frown, then looks away as if the sight of Jack pains him. Despite this Jack's ecstatic. No screaming, and able to be annoyed by bad jokes. His Doctor is definitely still in there.

"I've more marbles than _you_," the boy responds suddenly, an irritated look on his face as he studies the wall. Jack laughs, for once skipping any innuendo out of pure relief. The Doctor smiles too, then glances at him and immediately frowns. Jack is just bracing himself for a terrified yell or some other reaction to his Fact-ness when the Doctor abruptly jumps up from his seat on the floor.

"Koschei _shrunk_ me!" he exclaims loudly.

Jack jumps, startled by the sudden movement, and shoves himself further against the wall in case the Doctor decides to go into panic-mode again. The boy's face seems more affronted than terrified, though. Jack casts around for any response to that statement other than complete bafflement.

He quickly gives up. "Uhh… who?"

"Koschei, you silly ape!" the Doctor says, glaring then looking away quickly. That human is… revolting. What in the cosmos could have allowed that _thing_ to exist? The Doctor shakes his head and paces a few times, dimly recalling through a terrible headache that the human is actually somehow his friend, and that said human is probably confused right now because lower beings would know Time Lords by titles, not names.

Wait, _titles_? He and Koschei didn't have titles yet.

The Doctor stops short, shakes his head violently and lowers himself to the wall once more. The unsettling human's quizzical stare reminds him that he'd been clarifying something and he strives to remember… oh, that's right, they _do_ have titles now, he just has to think…

"Ah, him… the…" the Doctor screws up his face in confusion, pointing upwards vaguely in the direction from which he currently senses his fellow Time Lord. "Ah! The Master," he recalls finally. He frowns, "oh, that's a horrible title."

The human laughs. The Doctor tries to smile along with him but memories keep crowding in and getting all jumbled in his head, making it hard to think. His brain is going haywire, unable to rewrite itself to fit into such a small skull so quickly, and his TARDIS, though she tries, isn't able to provide much help. Most of her power is being drained supporting the paradox raging on the Earth below. He knows all this, and is also painfully aware that he's likely to forget it all in the next moment. His head pounds and he groans as he allows himself to wilt to the side. Ah, yes, this floor is much more comfortable… he could take a nap, probably, if not for that horrible, nauseating Fact across the room there. If the thing would just… leave. Maybe he could drive it away if he tried.

No, wait, can't do that. He rubs his eyes and tries to remember that the Fact is his friend, and he should try to tolerate it. But Rasillon the thing hurts his head…

"Doctor?" the human's face has fallen, and it is with an almighty force of will that the Doctor manages to hold onto a scrap of his adult mind. He's slipping into the mentality of a child and that isn't a pretty place to be for a Time Lord trapped with an immortal and a paradox in close vicinity. Sitting up quickly (the movement makes his head spin nauseatingly) he tries to compose himself. _Adult, adult, not child, you're 903 years old, not six…_

"I'm sorry, Jack. Having a bit of trouble fitting a mature brain into a child's skull," he says quickly, going for nonchalant even though he's terrified he'll forget what he's just said. His voice sounds high and squeaky and altogether not his own, and he groans as he presses small hands into his eyes. Jack, the human, Fact, whatever, is a beacon of worry and wrongness and it's driving him mad. If only the stupid ape could just _shut up_ for a second.

Thankfully, Jack doesn't respond with a joke. Instead his mind is serious and Theta knows before he hears it what he's going to say. _Is there anything I can do to help?_

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Yes." Theta—_the Doctor_—bites out. "Stop thinking so bloody loud."

Jack flashes a bolt of confusion and then sheepishly attempts a few levels of shielding. It's not nearly enough to block out the immortal's brainwaves completely from the Doctor's mind but it does quiet things a little, and the Time Lord breathes a sigh of relief. His head is pounding still, thoughts scattered and fragmented, but at least they're _his_ thoughts now, not Jack's or the guards' or anyone else's. The pain of Jack's Fact-ness has finally become bearable, too, shielded now and reduced to a sort of dull ache. He wonders if this is what Koschei had been going for when he'd tossed him in a cell with a paradox—forced mental shielding.

Speaking of Koschei— the Doctor whips his head around, watching the door. With a million Time Lords to a telepathic field, one could sometimes tell if another was drawing near by concentrating on their aura—with only one other of his kind in the whole universe, he can't help but sense it: the Master is near, heading towards their cell.

"Doc, what-" Jack starts, as the door slides open. The Doctor's eyes are already looking at the spot where Koschei's head appears as the man steps through the door.

"Well look at you!" the Master exclaims as he catches sight of the Doctor. "I knew it! All that little brain needed was an assault on its senses and it just shored itself right up!" He smiles gleefully as he kneels down in front of the Doctor, who glares. Saxon merely grins and reaches out a finger to touch the Doctor on the nose—nothing happens, apparently declaring this a success. "No telepathic leaking to speak of!"

"I wouldn't have been 'leaking' if you hadn't _shrunk me!_" the Doctor exclaims, memories still a bit jumbled but _definitely _knowing he's miffed about suddenly being four feet tall. A surge of human anger startles him and he turns his head just in time to see a Jack-shaped blur lunge toward the Master.

"YOU FUC—AAGH!" Jack is shot down almost as soon as he'd gotten up, a Toclafane bobbing in lazily from where it had been standing sentry outside. The Doctor stares as the body falls limply to the floor. Koschei seems completely oblivious, if a little amused, and continues their conversation as if uninterrupted.

"Ooh, all haughty. _Much_ better. I was beginning to get bored with the whole stoic grandpa thing."

The Doctor doesn't respond. The buzzing in his head that had begun to be ignorable—the Fact that was Jack—is suddenly all he can focus on. He stares at his friend's body as blood leaking from the laser wound slowly disappears, shudders at the sudden buildup of Vortex energy that signals Jack's return to the living. As an adult it was always just a bit of a discomforting feeling, a bit of a bombardment as his body redirected the excess energy and fielded it elsewhere. Now, suddenly, he realizes that isn't happening, he's not deflecting. The energy is building up, flowing through Jack and directly to him as he is an open receptacle unable to reject it. It accumulates rapidly as the human is healed, and Theta finds himself screaming as his mind burns. He sees gold.

He dimly hears Koschei yell, then blacks out to a sea of shining energy.


	2. Chapter 2

_**NOTE:** I describe the Valiant's bridge **completely incorrectly** in this one. I had no copy of the episode at the time and after finally seeing it again I chose not to revise the chapter because frankly the set in the show is garish. This is an AU anyway, so just assume that one of the myriad changes includes the Master following a much classier design aesthetic when building his death ship._

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><p>When next he wakes it is to a pounding headache and a very uncomfortable crick in his neck. The Doctor groans and rolls over on whatever soft plush surface is apparently under him. His head hurts too much to open his eyes, he decides. Whatever he's lying on is comfortable enough for now. Very comfortable, in fact. He might even be able to go back to sleep if not for the fact that the Master is busy trying to destroy the Earth, and he has to stop it.<p>

Wait, _what?_

The last few weeks flood suddenly back to his foggy mind, snapping him back to reality with an unpleasant jolt. He bolts upright, but far too quickly. What had meant to be a spring-into-action sort of move turns into a woozy stagger and a rather ungraceful fall back onto the pillow under him.

"Ow," he mutters rather stupidly.

Nobody seems to notice, however, and he wonders if he's been left alone in a room somewhere. Slowly, carefully, he opens his eyes, expecting bright lights or a platoon of those flying metal death-spheres hovering menacingly overhead.

Instead what he sees is a window. A very large window. And a table. That's a very familiar table, he thinks.

It takes a few seconds to register that he _has_ in fact been left in a room somewhere. The ship's bridge, to be more precise. Beside him are the stairs upon which an unfortunate president met his demise just a few short weeks ago, and stretching away from him is an expensive marble floor and that huge mahogany table, all bathed in soft moonlight filtering in from the viewing window that serves as the ship's bow.

He blinks, confused as to why he would be dumped _here_, of all places, and then remembers why this isn't so odd. It's the same spot where his little tent had been as an old man. He'd been briefly thrown by the fact that the tent was no longer there. The dog dish is, though. He wrinkles his nose distastefully at it.

Wait, though, if his tent is gone, what is he sitting on? With a start he looks down to find a plush, felt pillow-type bed, with short squishy sides all around him and a lower edge at the front. The soft blue fabric is patterned with… dog bones. And cartoon paws.

He stares for a few seconds before the penny drops. He's sitting on a dog bed. Wonderful. _Fantastic_.

Still, though, he thinks as he flops down on his back on the surprisingly plush fabric, it's comfortable. Moreso than the thin blanket arrangement he'd previously been stuck with. He glares faintly at the dark ceiling above him and lets his arms flop limply over the sides of his paw-patterned mattress.

_Clink!_

"Ow!"

Talking to himself is no less stupid the second time around, but he doesn't care to dwell on it. What deserves more attention is the thick metal band he's just managed to smash into his own wrist.

He rolls over onto his stomach and brings his wrist up towards his face for closer inspection. Clamped around his too-small arm is a half-centimetre thick ring of black metal. A soft green light blinks on and off on the face of what is presumably a readout screen. He squints hard at it—his spectacles would be nice to have about now, he thinks irritably—the little LCD display is flicking away in time to his heartsbeat, and displaying a few other assorted life signs in maddeningly small font. What in the seven systems does he need a vitals band for? And why does it have to be so bloody _uncomfortable?_

Feeling rebellious and not a little irked, he briefly attempts to pull the thing off. It's sized just tight enough to thwart him slipping it off his hand, and though he can spin it all the way around he can't for the life of him find a latch of any sort. In a fit of childishness (which he blames on his current shrunken state—though he's not really sure he wouldn't have done it as an adult in this particular body) he bites it. Hard.

The resultant electrical shock is enough to make him yelp and scramble to his feet in surprise. He shakes his tingling, vaguely painful arm with an expression of mingled shock and disbelief. The tiny light on the device blinks red a few times before switching back to green.

For a few seconds he merely stands there, watching his heartsbeat gradually calm on the little flickering monitor. He tries to quiet his now-juvenile mind and regain some measure of control over his emotions. As an old man it had been so easy! He hadn't had the energy to_ stand_, much less get worked up over a monitoring device. Now, though, he's feeling the effects of being five, (or, at least, being in a five year-old's body.) All this pent-up energy makes him irritable, and the thought of running around throwing a tantrum is sounding like an alarmingly good idea.

No, no, that would be ridiculous. He shakes his head as if to clear it and instead of throwing a fit (which he'd really, really like to do), walks calmly to the foot of the stairs which lead up to the bridge's small control deck.

"Now, you're not really letting me get up there, are you Master?" he mutters to himself, eyeing the staircase critically. He tactfully chooses to ignore the fact that he's speaking to an empty room again.

Well, nothing to do but find out. The Doctor takes a deep breath and dashes up the staircase before he can think about it.

_BZZZT!_

Alright, he probably could have thought of a better way to test that theory. Upon hitting the halfway point of the stairs he'd been immediately thrown back with an inordinately powerful electric shock from somewhere around his left wrist. Exactly what he'd thought would happen. Though, he reflects as he lies sprawled on the marble floor tiles, a less _kamikaze_ approach might have been more appropriate. Really has to work on controlling this over-energetic, impulsive body.

It is some time before he finally decides that enough is enough. The point is proven, he's now on a leash, which only makes sense as he now has about fifty times more energy at his disposal as he'd had as a geriatric, and thus a far larger ability to cause all manner of trouble. Whether this trouble should be useful to his plan to save the Earth seems to be a bit of a moot point in his child-dominated thoughts. (The idea of upending all the chairs in the room, for example, and possibly building a tower from them, is sorely tempting. Not useful though. _No, no, stop_ _thinking of ways to make a chair-fort! Not helpful!)_

His original plan is still valid. There should be enough psychic prowess between he and his TARDIS to shore up the few links he's already woven into the Archangel network, and with a bit of fancy thought-juggling he should still be able to keep his actions a secret from Koschei. Being this small and volatile will make things quite a bit harder, of course, but not impossible. And for Martha's sake, at least, he has to try.

The doctor pushes himself to his feet and makes his way back over to the strangely-comfortable dog bed. Sitting crosslegged on the patterned fabric, he breathes slowly, closes his eyes, and begins to work.

#-#

He's so bored he think he might burst.

Being stuck in a (relatively) small room as a full-grown Time Lord would have left the Doctor's tenth body a restless, fidgety mess. He has something on the order of twenty times more energy, now, and a case of ADHD to rival even the most rambunctious of human children. This, he realizes, is why young Time Lords were always sent off to the Academy so early in life—so their poor parents wouldn't have to deal with them!

He's long since given up on Archangel weaving for the night; aside from the restlessness he's beginning to realize how slow he'll have to take things now. His mental control and attention span wanes after only a few hours in this state, making him sloppy, making him mess up and put threads where they shouldn't be. It's both dangerous to his health and more difficult to keep secret. It's that 'leaking' problem again; he can hear the guards' thoughts, they're probably catching glimpses of his, and he _knows_ the Master is nearby, watching him and listening. His fellow Time Lord would be able to read him like an open book if he tried to push full-speed through weaving into the network, something he can't afford to have happen. Sure, going in blocks of only a few hours at a time means that progress which once would have been accomplished in a week will now take two or more. But it's a necessary sacrifice for secrecy. And besides, it should still be enough. It should still work. It'll _have_ to work.

In a fit of extreme boredom and an intense desire to make trouble he's gone ahead and enacted his chair-tower idea. The stack is no more than six feet tall but he still feels like a giant, balancing precariously on top and looking down on the world so far away through that window. He wishes he had wings. Wishes he could just turn into a bird and fly away from all this. Birds don't have to worry about the fate of billions of people. Birds also don't have to worry about being all alone in the universe save for a madman who was once their friend. Because birds are dumb animals, thinking of nothing but their next meal and how long until it's time to migrate.

These thoughts entertain him for about the space of a minute before he decides he really wouldn't want to be a bird, because they have that nasty habit of being eaten by a lot of things. What else could he be? A human, maybe. Humans can't fly though. He's human-shaped. Maybe he could craft a pair of wings and then he and Martha and maybe even Jack could go flying.

He's just started flapping his arms experimentally—to test air resistance, mind you, most certainly not because he's pretending to be an eagle—when the lights in the whole room flick on simultaneously, startling him. A menacingly familiar aura appearing abruptly from behind at about the same time nearly sends him toppling off his mighty chair-tower with shock. One minute he'd been a bird and the next accosted by both fluorescent lights and a sinister Time Lord.

"Having fun with the very expensive furniture, are we?"

The Doctor glances briefly over his shoulder to see the Master standing there, hands in the pockets of his dark trousers and looking just as casual as can be. It's a ruse, though; he can sense the dark fury behind the calm façade. Something very bad must have happened. Or… nothing's happened at all, maybe. The Doctor is fairly sure Koschei could find cause to be mad over nothing.

The Doctor is unwilling to speak at the moment. He's on top of a tower of, indeed, very expensive chairs, pretending to be a duck. (Or was it eagle?) There's nothing really he can think of to say in this sort of situation. Nothing appropriate, anyway.

They engage in a short staring contest wherein the Doctor finally decides he might want to actually put his arms down, and does, and then decides he might want to sit on the chair-tower instead of stand precariously, and does that too. He only turns himself partway to meet Koschei's eyes, however, wanting to have to option of looking out the large window instead of at his enemy if he so chooses. His bare feet bounce off a chair rung as he watches the Master's face for any sign of what this visit might be about. Explaining the stupid metal bracelet, maybe?

It's a few minutes before Koschei speaks.

"That freak of yours managed to kill two of my guards," he says with just a hint of malice. The Doctor smiles, thinking that Jack must have been really, really mad to do that. Oh, Jack… last he knew the immortal man had been shot by a Toclafane. Funny, though, the Doctor thinks, he can't remember what happened afterwards.

"I'm glad you're happy about that," the Master growls. The Doctor can't really see the point of pretending that he isn't—the loss of life, of course, is sad but since the guards will come back to life after he's reset everything, it's alright. He grins and bounces his feet on the rungs of the chair below him.

The Master takes a few steps closer to the Doctor's mighty chair tower. He glances at the still-flickering light on the Doctor's wristband, smirking.

"I suppose you've already figured out your new… parameters," the Master says cheerfully. He's really quite proud of himself for coming up with the device. It generates its own electrified field in response to sensors embedded in the walls. The Master is able to set what areas his new little pet is allowed to go into using his laser screwdriver to activate and de-activate different doorways. He'd had great fun already this morning, watching the miniaturized Time Lord getting repeatedly zapped as he tested his boundaries.

"You could've made a warning beep, or something," the boy replies, fiddling with the device. "I keep getting shocked when I walk too close to a door." Strangely, the Doctor doesn't sound too upset by this, seeming instead to be in a bit of a cheery haze. The Master, curious, reaches out a bit with his telepathy and finds the boy's mind in a complete jumble. He snorts to himself as he withdraws. That's what the man gets for keeping his thoughts so disorganized—it'll probably take him weeks to get his brains back in some kind of order. Ah, well, he thinks airily, a blithely stupid Doctor is better than a stoically boring Doctor.

"What, and take away all the fun?" the Master grins, "I may just start shifting the boundaries around randomly, let you wear yourself out re-mapping them every day."

The Doctor gives him a rather odd look, and, apparently bored, looks out the window. The Master glares. He's being ignored by a five year-old! Suddenly furious, he lashes out with the first thing that comes to mind to anger the boy.

"I dropped a rather large bomb on America last night. Had it built in Japan. Thought I'd go with a bit of irony, you know?" he waves a hand, pretending to be making conversation rather than trying to get a rise out of the not-child, "I may have mis-judged the new population centres, of course, only managed a death toll of a little over half a million. The Toclafane picked up the rest, though, so it all worked out."

Finishing his admittedly pointless tale, the Master watches the Doctor intently for a reaction. To his great charign, the child yawns.

"I'm tired, Koschei, can we talk tomorrow?" the boy asks, sliding off of his stack of chairs and landing on the marble tiles with a soft _thump._ "Thank you for the bed, by the way, I like the doggy paw pattern."

This last is said with, as far as the Master can tell, complete honesty. The shrunken Time Lord meanders over to his dog bed and curls up in it with his back to the Master. Slowing brain waves and heartsrate indicate that he's fallen asleep almost immediately.

The Master is baffled. And, he admits to himself, more than a little bit furious.

"Listen here, you little-!" he starts forward, ready to pounce on the boy and shake this Time Lord's muddled brains back into order, when a guard bursts in the door.

"Sir!" the young man starts. The Master whirls on him.

"WHAT!" he yells. His unfortunate slave cowers away from him.

"S-sir y-y-you w-wanted to be informed i-if the G-Germans started another uprising.." the man stutters. The Master glares viciously and wonders if he might be able to make the stupid ape's brains melt if he focuses hard enough. He files that thought away to ponder another day, however.

"And?" he demands impatiently.

"W-well… th-they've started killing some of the Toclafane, s-sir."

The Master snarls. Idiotic humans! Whether from the future or the past, none of them have an ounce of sense in them. He gives his old enemy one last parting glare—which the sleeping boy takes absolutely no notice of—and stalks out of the room. He'll deal with the uprising, _violently_, and hope that perhaps when he returns the Doctor will have sorted himself out somewhat. The Master isn't about to let his arch nemesis wander blissfully through all this, not when he's specifically catered this whole year to be a living nightmare for the other Time Lord.

He shoots the guard with his laser screwdriver on the way out, disintegrating the man. Whatever unfortunate German's figured out how to breach Toclafane shells is going to wish he'd never been born.

He's gone. The Doctor's brain registers this dimly, and he's quickly roused from his pseudo-sleep. The guard's death sends a lightning-quick pulse of agonized psychic outcry, making the Doctor groan as he wakes up with a sudden, pounding headache. He really needs to get this psychic leaking thing under control. Thank Rassilon that the Master had killed all those people last night, when the Doctor was still out cold, rather than today. He could still feel the echo of losing all those Archangel threads thumping at the inside of his skull.

He sits up carefully and rubs his head. The TARDIS's hastily-implemented plan to keep the Master from seeing his work with the Archangel threads had been brilliant, really. She'd simply withdrawn from his mind, taking most of his more recent memories—specifically, those after he'd been shrunk and she'd started helping him to reorganize the Archangel threads—leaving him quite thoroughly muddled and immune to the Master's probing. He'd retained enough of his capricious personality to become bored and feign tiredness to get rid of his guest, which hadn't, in the long run, been the best of ideas. Thank goodness that human had showed up or he might have found himself on the receiving end of a very irate Time Lord. Note to self, he thinks blandly, react more to announcements of mass death. And don't ignore your captor to look out the window.

This was shaping up to be an immense, tiring, irritating balancing act. He'd known it would be that way from the start, of course, but the knowledge doesn't make the next ten months seem any less daunting. More than ever he wishes he could just grow wings and fly away.


	3. Chapter 3

_**NOTE:** This one cuts off abruptly, sincere apologies._

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><p>The problem of what to do with all his excess energy has been quite firmly resolved. After less than a week of devoting as much time as can be spared to weaving himself into the Archangel network, he's found himself exhausted. He's not on schedule; there won't be enough power to do what he needs to when the year is up, going at this snail's pace. Without an alternative plan, though, he has no choice but to keep going. But he's so tired...<p>

He lies on his back in his semi-comfortable doggy bed, staring listlessly up at the high ceiling above. There are 851 crystals in the hanging chandelier. He thinks maybe he's miscounted- who puts an odd number of crystals in a chandelier?- but can't quite muster up the energy to re-count them. His TARDIS sings in his head, trying to share as much of her power as she can spare, but she's nearly as depleted as he is. He waves her off, both mentally and physically (which probably looks pretty stupid) and she backs away sadly.

With a sigh he puts an arm over his eyes to block out the light from the windows and thinks about trying to sleep. This body doesn't tolerate over-exertion well at all, and yet he still has the habits of several centuries telling him he won't need to sleep for another few days. The result is that he's very, very tired, but his mind won't let him deviate from its own set schedule to let him rest. He supposes if he were to pass out, it would do the trick. He's not sure that would be very good for his health though.

The sound of an opening door distracts him from his not-sleeping problems, and he lifts his arm slightly to see who it is. Francine glares at him from across the room, looking strange in her maid's outfit and cleaning rag. She blames him for all this, (he can feel the sentiment pouring off her in waves) which is fair so far as he's concerned- if he hadn't taken Martha travelling with him, after all, her family would never have been targeted by the Master. In light of this he's been doing his best not to bother any of them too much. Which is fairly easy since he hardly ever sees them. Francine is here now, though, so he flashes her a courteous smile. She glowers and his expression droops. Well, he supposes it was worth a shot.

It feels wrong to sleep while someone's working nearby, so he quietly hauls himself up to a cross-legged sitting position and leans his aching head on his hands. Another unfortunate side-effect of trying to force a juvenile's mind to do things an adult would find difficult—a near-constant headache.

"Ouch," a voice says quietly. The Doctor looks up quickly to see Francine half-kneeling on the floor, holding her lower back. She's hurt it somehow and is obviously having trouble bending over to wash the tiles. Now he feels even worse. He stands up, trying not to sway too obviously, and walks over to her.

"Can I help?" he asks politely. He's gotten very good as disguising the fact that he feels about ready to pass out at any given moment, and so projects an air of apologetic calm. It doesn't seem to be working, though, as Francine glares viciously at him.

"Get away from me," she bites back. The Doctor's face falls marginally; he'd expected that sort of response, of course, but hearing it said with such venom still hurts.

"Look, I.. ah.." he pauses, bites his lip, tries to think of any way that standing over a woman who's cleaning the floor with a washrag doesn't look bad. He compromises by sitting down a few feet away from her before he continues, "I'm really sorry about all this. If I could do things differently-"

"Save it," Francine snaps. She's managed to get all the way down to her knees and is now dutifully washing the marble tiles. She looks up from her work for the briefest of moments to glare at him, fire in her eyes, and goes back to scrubbing.

"Right, sorry…" he mutters. His head is still swimming slightly from the morning's attempt to weave an entire section of archangel threads at once, and he finds himself rather lost in the shifting patterns of daylight on the section of the floor in front of him. So distracted, he doesn't notice immediately that Francine has started speaking.

"Listen to me!" she barks. His head snaps up to look at her and he nearly keels over from the sudden movement. Alright, no more over-exertions if he can help it.

"… what? Sorry…" he rubs the back of his neck apologetically.

"What's wrong with you?" Francine asks. The Doctor figures it must be his currently-questionable mental state that makes him think she looks concerned. He smiles disarmingly for her benefit.

"Nothing at all! Oh, was I in your way?" he asks, noticing that he's sitting on a spot of floor she hasn't washed yet. Standing up to move doesn't seem that appealing at the moment, so he scoots backwards a few feet and hopes it's far enough.

Francine gives him a look that he doesn't even try to interpret and goes back to her chore. He bites his lip and tries not to feel too horrible about all this. The plan to fix it all is in motion, he's giving everything he's got to reversing all this, there's nothing more to do…

Except there is.

Bracing himself with as much of the TARDIS's energy as he dares to borrow, he stands and walks over to Martha's mother. He doesn't ask, this time. Merely takes the washcloth from her without a word.

"Excuse me—!" she starts. He sits himself down on his rump and starts scrubbing at the stain she's been working on.

"You should rest your back. Don't worry, I'll make sure you don't get in trouble," he says in what he hopes is a reassuring tone. He squints at the surprisingly stubborn spot on the floor and deduces that it's some sort of coffee stain.

Francine's stare seems to burn holes in his back. He thinks maybe she's realised that she could overpower him with little more than a shove, and is about to steal the washrag back. Minutes pass, though, and she doesn't.

Daring to look over his shoulder, he sees that she's seated herself against one of the legs of the dinner table, eyes closed in relief as she holds her injured back. Despite a creeping dizziness, the Doctor smiles and turns back to his newly-acquired job. The coffee stain is fading. He thinks it'll probably go away fairly quickly if he just works at it.

#-#

Francine opens one eye and observes the Doctor's small back as he scrubs at a stain she hasn't been able to get out in three nights of trying. This is the first time she's been in here to find the boy-who-is-actually-a-dangerous-alien awake. Other nights, days, any time really he's just been a lump on that dog bed. She can't figure out what he's been doing. Sleeping, probably, while the rest of them suffer.

Paradoxically, though, it doesn't _look_ like he's been sleeping at all. There are dark circles under the boy's young-old eyes, and though he might hide the fact from Saxon and all the rest of his horrible henchmen, she can tell he's perilously close to collapsing. There's just that bit of sway to his movements, a bit of blank confusion when he speaks that tells her he's not really all there mentally.

"Doctor…" she starts to ask. He doesn't hear her, still scrubbing at that coffee stain. That's good, though, as she's quickly reconsidered speaking to him and instead clamps her mouth shut. The little-boy image is a trick, she reminds herself. He's an alien, like Saxon, like those flying death-spheres, and he's the one responsible for her family's suffering.

As if hearing her thoughts, he stops cleaning and glances at her sorrowfully. She closes her eyes quickly, pretending she hasn't noticed. The sounds of scrubbing soon resume, and she can't deny the relief she feels that she isn't the one doing it. Her back has been hurting her nonstop for days now. Resting it for even this little while feels heavenly.

Minutes pass in near-silence, while Francine rests and tries not to feel too grateful to the Thing that destroyed her life, and the Doctor does a surprisingly good job of cleaning up. She sighs quietly to herself. A campaign of hate is difficult to continue while the subject of it is being genuinely nice to you.

Her thoughts are broken suddenly when a damp cloth is shoved back into her hands. She opens her eyes to find the child Doctor standing over her with a fairly wild expression in his eyes, urging her to get up.

"What? Why?" she asks. Still, the urgency in his expression makes her obey him.

"Just, look like you're cleaning. I'm sorry, so sorry," the boy says. He looks to the entryway of the bridge for a moment before retreating to his corner.

Before she can figure out what the Doctor is trying to do, the doors behind her slam open.

"Hello, my dears!"


	4. Chapter 4

_**NOTE:** Slight potential to be incredibly disturbing._

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><p>The Doctor looks exhausted. She eyes him critically from where she sits, rigid, at the Master's mockery of a thanksgiving feast. Her family are around her, Tish by her side and her husband across from her, both looking just as wary as she feels. It's just the four of them around this huge table. A brief respite before the Master bursts in spouting madness, she thinks.<p>

It's been almost a week since she last saw the Doctor, and if she'd thought he seemed tired then it's nothing to the shadows she sees now. He's sitting hunched over the table, head leaning on one thin arm, eyes closed. She doubts he's sleeping. Resting, maybe, but the lines around his eyes and the stiffness of his body betray him. She doesn't think she's ever seen him sleep, wonders if he has to. The dark circles under his eyes certainly seem to indicate that he does.

As if sensing her stare, he opens his eyes and gives her a small, tired smile. She tries to return the favour, thinks she's probably failed miserably. The Doctor looks as if he's about to say something to her but is cut off as his eyes widen and he visibly stiffens as his gaze shoots to the doors. It's the body language they've all come to associate with the Master's arrival.

"Aw, look at the family all sitting together!" the madman crows, striding into the hall with Lucy in tow. She is clad in orange, today. A well-tailored dress that hugs in all the right places. She seems completely absent, smiling vacantly as she takes a seat by the head of the table and next to the Doctor. The Master, eyes following her, seems to notice his enemy for the first time.

"Doctor! Now honestly, head on the table? What kind of manners are those?" he chides, playful in his tone but with danger in his eyes. The Doctor shrugs and sits up, eyes averted. For once there is no cutting comeback, and the Master seems disappointed. Francine can only hope that won't mean trouble for them all later.

"Now, are we all here?" the Master asks happily. He scans the scant occupants of the table and comes to light on the only empty chair. "Oh dear, now I certainly can't have forgotten Captain Jack!" He turns on his heel, looking towards the door impatiently. "Where is that Freak?" he asks.

As if on cue the Doctor's eyes light golden, and the door opens. Jack is escorted in by two Toclafane, well-dressed and looking far healthier than Francine's seen in the last month or so. The immortal man's gaze instantly seeks out the Doctor, seeming to fall when he realizes that his friend is still trapped in the body of a child.

"I thought we'd get him a bit cleaned up before we let him near the table," the Master smiles. Jack, as he so often does now, looks ready to kill the man, but a glance at the tired boy that is the Doctor, and Francine's terrified family, and he instead takes his seat quietly. He's been placed across from the Doctor, forced to watch as his young-old friend cringes at the sight of him, eyes glowing with the excess vortex energy emanating from Jack.

"Oh, but I do love that effect," the Master says, taking his seat. He smiles indulgently at the softly glowing Doctor, who is busy trying not to wince. "Like a little Christmas bulb! Hmm.. We'll have to think about that next month."

The meal is uneventful, as far as meals on the Valiant go. Despite everything Francine finds herself wishing the Doctor would eat more. He sits picking at his food, clearly unsettled by Jack and too drained physically to put much effort into eating. The Master is indulging himself with stories of his latest conquest, Lucy chiming in at all the right places with _oohs_ and _aahs_. Jack eats voraciously, as he always does when food is set in front of him. Too many deaths by starvation, he'd said once, taught him never to let a meal go to waste. Francine thinks of this as she urges her family to eat. A full-spread turkey dinner is something to be taken advantage of, unpleasant company or not.

#-#

The Doctor pokes rather listlessly at the meat on his plate, trying to quell the rise of nausea in his stomach. This isn't turkey. He desperately hopes the Master won't reveal that fact to the humans, but he knows it's only a matter of time. The entire day's just been a setup for this meal, after all, and there's no way the Master would let it go by without tormenting his guests just that little more.

He sneaks a discrete glance at Jack to see if the immortal has noticed the not-turkey, and immediately wishes he hadn't. Besides the fact that, no, Jack hasn't noticed, the sight of that terrible, bright knot of _fact_ sends his time sense reeling and his head pounding. Gold tinges the edges of his vision as he quickly looks away.

Wrong direction. The Master is smiling at him from the head of the table, just beyond Lucy. He considers averting his eyes, even decides that, yes, that's probably the right thing to do, and then finds himself glaring. And he thought his adult body was impulsive! The Master's grin has widened, nearly manic now, and the Doctor finally manages to look away. He can feel the others watching him, wonders what he could possibly offer the Master to keep him from sharing tonight's mealtime secret.

_Nothing I'd want._

His fork clatters to his plate as he suddenly sits up ramrod straight and stares at his old enemy in shock. The Master's voice is cackling in his mind, even as the man's physical face grins at him. The humans have all stopped eating, startled by his sudden movement.

_W-what are you—? How are you doing this? Get out!_

He glares venomously on the last words, pushing with all his might against the presence in his mind. The Master merely chuckles.

"Now you know that's not going to work," he gloats, watching the Doctor like a cat with a mouse. The Doctor can feel himself panicking, hearts speeding up as the malevolent force in his mind shows no signs of retreating. All the humans are watching now, he can feel their fear, confusion, Jack's concern.

"G-get out!" he splutters. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Jack start to stand, Toclafane rounding on him even before he can push his chair out. Struck with an idea, he tries desperately to keep his immediate thoughts from the prying eye of the Master.

Black tendrils curl around his mindscape, as he becomes partially pulled inwards by the invasion. The Master is searching, seeking out his secrets. He can't believe he's let this happen, let his concentration slip far enough to allow the Master into his head. No, no, don't think, don't vocalize… Just do!

Before anyone can stop him the Doctor lunges across the table, standing on his chair to reach as he grabs a startled Jack by the hand. A Toclafane takes aim and fires but that only helps him as he takes the ensuing surge of vortex energy from Jack's death and channels it inside himself, through his own mind and hard, hard as he can push it towards the Master's.

The resulting burst of lights behind his eyes renders him practically senseless. There is only gold and light and somewhere far away his TARDIS calling. And then Tish screams and he comes back to himself sprawled on the table, left arm stretched out and gripping Jack's dead body. Fizzles of vortex energy spark and jump between them, burning the already scorched skin on his hand and arm. His hearts are beating triple-time and every breath is fire, but he can't feel anyone but himself in his head and he knows he's driven the Master out. Pain, he can handle, loneliness he has practice with, but being violated on such an incredibly basic level… In telepathic terms such an invasion is tantamount to rape, and he can hardly bring himself to believe that the man he once counted as friend could have done something so vile. This madness has pulled him farther down than he'd thought possible.

The table shakes and he is pulled bodily from Jack's arm and tossed on his back on the floor by what he can only assume is the Master. Stars are still dancing through his vision and making everything but the most basic of shapes impossible to make out. _Burnt out the optic nerve_, he thinks, giddily. Shock is taking over his body and suddenly nothing is nearly as bad as it was. A drop of something warm hits his face and he blinks through the dull golden haze to see the Master standing directly over him, a thin red line of what is presumably blood leaking from what the Doctor decides to assume is his nose. What he can make out of his friend's face doesn't look too pleased and he can only grin, thinking _serves you right!_ with no hope or desire to be heard.

#-#

When Jack comes to it is to the sight of the Master standing over the Doctor with possibly the most vicious expression he's yet seen on the vitriolic Time Lord. A line of blood is leaking from his nose and it doesn't take Jack long at all to figure out what happened. The Master had invaded the Doctor's mind and, panicking, the Doctor had driven him out using the only weapon at his immediate disposal: vortex energy. Jack is impressed, if worried for the health of everyone in the vicinity. The Master doesn't look pleased at all, and an upset Master usually results in death for him and pain for the Joneses, and the Doctor.

Speaking of whom—Jack leans forward slightly in his seat only to see the man-turned-boy in question lying sprawled on the ground, grinning like a loon. Jack thinks he must be in some sort of shock, because he doesn't look even remotely perturbed by the laser screwdriver now pointed at his face. The Master yells something untranslated, a jangling, angry noise that sounds somehow like music. Giggling, the Doctor responds in the same language, his soft child's voice adding a lilting quality to the notes.

_Gallifreyan…_ Jack realizes, transfixed by the sound. In the two months they've been here, neither the Doctor or the Master has uttered anything in their native language. Or, he thinks, the TARDIS has been translating for him. He hates to think what the sudden change means for the state of the Doctor's mind.

Another few chiming words, back and forth between the two Time Lords. Whatever the Doctor just said seems to have infuriated the Master, and before Jack can react he finds himself dead for the second time in as many minutes, the laser screwdriver pointed squarely at his heart.

#-#

All is silent as Jack crumples to the floor. The Master stands still, screwdriver still pointed at the air where the Freak used to be. He's heaving, mind straining to right itself after the Doctor's unexpected onslaught. Using the Freak to channel a bolt of vortex energy… Dangerous, stupid, and exactly the sort of idiotic thing the Doctor would do. He turns and glares again at the boy sprawled on the floor, small chest heaving and eyes screwed up in pain. At least the little bastard's stopped grinning now.

Behind him the Joneses are staring, glued to their seats with fright. Lucy, bless her, is still gingerly sipping her wine. With a quick flip of the screwdriver into his pocket the Master deliberately turns from his adversary, smiles at his wife and plucks a napkin from the table to mop up the blood from his nose. The humans don't know what to think; he likes it that way.

"Alright, kids, show's over. You don't want your turkey to get cold now do you?" He grins at the Jones family, who seem capable of nothing besides shocked staring. Francine, though, glares faintly. Oh but she's suddenly so protective of the Doctor now that he's small. It's cute how quickly her tiny human mind switches gears based on nothing but appearances.

"Oh, but you know the really interesting thing?" he suddenly continues, leaning on the back of his chair casually. "With just a few spices and the right cooking method, you can make a human thigh taste almost exactly like turkey! No kidding!" His grin widens as the faces before him suddenly go pale. Humans!, he thinks, no sense of taste whatsoever.

"Now," he stands up straight, stretching and patting his stomach as if full, "I don't think this table is going to clear _itself_, is it?" A pointed, dangerous stare at Francine, and suddenly all the Joneses are up, clearing dishes with that sickly pale look on their faces. It's frankly quite hilarious, and he laughs as he draws up Lucy from her seat. She's completely unfazed, the mad girl. He loves how insane she's become in such a short time, how disconnected and cruel she is. Definitely an improvement from just a few months ago, the priss in frills and curls.

He orders Jack's body cleared from the room and the Doctor, still glowing faintly and staring at the ceiling, to be left alone. Lucy leaves for her chambers and he leans against the table, waiting for the Joneses to clear it and considering his options. He'd love so dearly to hurt the Doctor right now, but looking at the Time Lord he can see that neither physical nor emotional pain is going to penetrate far in this state. The boy seems to be in a bit of a daze, no doubt from channeling the equivalent of a TARDIS flux drive through a head the size of a coconut. Talk about overreacting.

"Doctor," he says, kneeling beside the boy on the floor. The golden glow is receding from his eyes, leaving them their usual brown—the optic nerve must have burnt out, but with all that residual healing energy he can probably see well enough by now. Experimentally he waves a hand above the Doctor's face and is rewarded with a startled blink.

"Wakey wakey," he says, the words dripping with malice. His old friend seems confused.

"_Was I asleep?_" the boy asks, blinking. He's using a subset of Gallifreyan usually reserved for children, the words simplistic and conveying only the most basic of temporal clause. It isn't how the Doctor normally speaks, and the Master finds himself suddenly concerned. He wants his enemy to hurt, yes, but he certainly doesn't want him to lapse into some sort of bizarre second childhood. That would be no fun at all.

Francine is mopping up bloodstains nearby and he speaks in English for her benefit, knowing the TARDIS is too weakly linked to the Doctor's mind to be translating. He likes the humans to be included—the more you know the more you have to fear, after all.

"You tried to kill me, you little bastard," he says maliciously. It is part anger at the actual event, and part fear that he has finally pushed the Doctor's juvenile mind too far.

"_Oh? I'm sorry, Koschei, I didn't mean to._" The Doctor yawns and raises his left arm, scrutinizing the scorched flesh with a detached air. _"I think I burnt my hand," h_e remarks blankly.

In a fit of irritation the Master grabs the injured appendage, finding only the barest hint of pleasure in the startled squeal. The Doctor's mind is receding from his now, too young to do anything but wander, and the silence left allows the drums to beat louder than ever.


	5. Chapter 5

_**NOTE:** Torture of a sort-of child._

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><p>He is aware of a weight on his chest and hard metal under his head but nothing much else. Golden light rushes through him in a torrent of burning and pain and it feels like regeneration all over again, except this time he's too young, too small, this body isn't ready and when the light recedes it will be over, dead, gone. Oh, but it would stop the pain. Please, Rassilon, God, anyone please stop this pain…<p>

The weight on his chest intensifies as his body tries to buck and convulse, he knows he is screaming but the air won't come now, his lungs compressed by, of all things, an Armani shoe. The Master towers above him but he only catches glimpses; the laser screwdriver pointed down at him, his old friend's face contorted in rage. _Please stop_, he thinks desperately. _Please please please I don't want to die._ But as he manages to open gold-tinged eyes a sliver all he sees is Koschei twisting the head of the screwdriver one more notch, and then all is fire and pain and the TARDIS is screaming with him as the end comes.

_Stop stop stop/he's killing us/stop please stop/too much, too much we can't/please please please I don't want to die/we're trying can't-_

The litany of TARDIS and owner curls around him like a psychic blanket, soothing the morning's anger. Suffering has always fascinated him, screaming keeping the drums at bay while he plays with his newest toy. And there certainly is screaming… He presses his foot down harder and feels the convulsing muscles of the Doctor's chest beneath his shoe. The boy is glowing like a hundred-watt lightbulb, vortex energy shining out every bit of exposed skin. And in his head the intertwined panic of both the Doctor and his ship drowns out the towering four-count of madness almost completely.

More, more and maybe they'll stop altogether. He points the screwdriver at his enemy again. Widen the link, let the screams come through.. Below him the Doctor manages to open his eyes—glowing gold with just a hint of their usual brown—only to witness the screwdriver turned up another notch.

The effect is beautiful. Gold light literally _shoots_ from the boy's body, and while his physical body has lost the air for screaming his mind is working overtime to make up for it. The TARDIS has practically fused with her owner now and he can hardly tell the two of them apart.

_STOP STOP STOP TOO MUCH WE CAN'T WE CAN'T DYING STOP WE'LL DIE CAN'T CAN'T HELP STOP HELP ME HELP_

The psychic outcry is so loud he sees a guard fall to his knees in shock, one of the Toclafane hovering nearby stops short and drops to the ground. Oh, this is beautiful. That bastard Freak can hear this, he knows he can. The only other being on this ship with any modicum of psychic training, he has to be feeling it. Grinning madly he makes to turn up the link another notch—

_STOP Stop stop stop stop dying we can't.._

Below him the Doctor has stopped writhing, head falling limply to the side. Shit! Too much. He shuts off the link abruptly and the glow goes out like a lightswitch turning off. Bloody stupid kid body can't handle as much as an adult, he'd forgotten in his anger. Maybe he should re-age the Doctor and try again… But oh, he thinks, then he wouldn't have this power to cause so much damage at the touch of a button. What this child's body lacks in stamina it makes up for in being delightfully vulnerable. The thought cheers him a little, and he takes his foot from the small boy's chest.

The Doctor is heaving, trying desperately to get air as his pulmonary bypass simultaneously tries to work around the damage inflicted by too much vortex energy. Blood bubbles from his mouth and in a small but steady stream from both ears. The Master wonders idly if he's popped an eardrum, then decides he doesn't much care. He lifts his foot again and toes at a bloody spot on the Doctor's chest, eliciting a strangled yelp and a sob. Oh, broke a rib… He stands above his fallen prey for a second, then, gleefully, kicks him.

The effect is marvelous. The Doctor screams again, hoarsely this time because he's yelled his throat raw, and tries to curl up on his side around the worst of his injuries. Blood drips from his mouth and the Master worries suddenly that he's actually damaged something important. He kneels down quickly and touches his fingers to the boy's temples, seeking a damage report. Almost immediately he is thrown from the Doctor's mind in a fit of childish rage. The Master stumbles back and lands on his bum, terribly undignified, but amused. If he's well enough to do that, the Master decides, then he'll be fine.

He stands slowly and dusts off his trousers, grins down at his enemy and is rewarded with the Doctor squinting angrily up at him. Still a bit of gold shining around his irises, sign that the TARDIS link is still active enough to be sending him energy. Good, then, he'll heal quickly. The Master smiles. That was good, very therapeutic. He's still mad, a little, but in his head the drums are quiet, and he can think clearly again, and best of all, the Doctor is in pain. That's always worth some cheer.

Behind him the guard and Toclafane seemed to have picked themselves up somewhat. He doesn't turn, too busy inspecting his shoe for blood specks.

"Have Francine clean this mess up when she's done with the Freak." He instructs happily. The guard salutes him shakily, the Toclafane bobs off to locate the mother-turned-maid. Med student for a daughter, he thinks, she'll patch him up if there's any real damage. He looks down one last time at his prey, breathing shallowly and staring at the far wall as if in a daze. One last kick for good measure, and he makes his way out the door. Now where on Earth could Lucy have got to…

#-#

She thought things couldn't get any worse after Jack, but she finds herself proven wrong as she steps wearily onto the bridge. In the centre of the floor is a huddle of blue cotton and brown hair that she knows instantly to be the Doctor.

"Doctor!" Despite herself, she runs to him. The boy is trembling, staring with unfocused eyes into the middle distance and apparently completely unaware of his surroundings. Blood dribbles from his mouth into a puddle on the floor, and his shirt is stained with an ever-growing blossom of red.

Shaking, she rolls him onto his back. The rosette of spreading blood sticks his shirt to his chest, and she can see a lump of what surely must be a rib that has punctured the skin. She's heard horror stories from Martha and she knows from experience the severity of such injuries, but stuck here with nothing more than a maid's outfit and a cleaning rag she is lost as to what she's expected to do. Her mother's instinct is screaming, a child is in danger, a child is going to die unless you do something! She reaches out a hand, touches his chest.

Below her fingers the thrum of two heartbeats suddenly throws the world into sharp focus. No, her logical mind interjects, this is not a child. This is wrong, this is _alien_, an ancient being who stole her daughter and brought this horror upon her family. Her face hardens as she pulls away. She's been sent to clean up, and that is what she sets about doing. The tracks of blood on the floor, the wall, she mops up with practiced ease.


	6. Chapter 6

_**NOTE:** Doesn't really fit in all that well to the larger narrative- I wrote it during a completely different phase of plot development. Features paradox shenanigans.  
><em>

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><p>Rose tries not to hide behind the Doctor as they're led at gunpoint down a long, metal corridor. The bowels of the ship smell of oil and grease and she's fairly sure she would have been sick by now, if not for the less-than-comforting knowledge that this is by far not the worst place she's been in. Just a few months with the Doctor has taken her to so many wild, amazing, and sometimes horribly foul places. A few gas fumes aren't going to bother her. She stands up marginally straighter and allows the Doctor to get a little bit ahead of her. Just a little bit, mind. The men with guns pointed at her back still have her nervous.<p>

They walk for maybe five minutes, weaving in and out of pipes and metal grating, before they finally stop at a door. Rose's eyes widen as they walk through it. The industrial smell and grit is replaced by a lofty, plush walkway fit for a five-star hotel. The carpets are of a deep red colour, the walls done up in tasteful shades of gold. Not exactly the sort of thing she'd been expecting when they'd been kidnapped. Dark cells and cots, maybe. For a moment she dares hope that whoever decided to beam them up to this ship is just doing so for the sake of being nice.

Mentally she kicks herself at that thought. _Psh._ _Yeah right. _If there's one thing she's learned from travelling with the Doctor it's that nobody ever captures you for nice reasons.

Perhaps unconsciously, the Doctor has grabbed her hand. She ducks her head and smiles a bit as they're led down the luxurious hall. It's not really the time or place for such thoughts, but _god_ she loves it when he holds her hand.

"Stop here," a guard barks sternly. She and the Doctor obligingly halt before the large girt-metal doors in front of them. Through porthole-like windows she can just glimpse what looks like a high chandelier, suspended from a tiered ceiling. She wonders what kind of kidnapper lives in such plush surroundings.

She may get her answer quicker than she'd thought. After a brief signal to his compatriot, the main guard pushes in a series of numbers on a keypad and the doors pop open. The two of them are herded into a large ballroom before the door shuts again and a loud click signals that they've been locked in.

"Well then…" Rose starts, feeling a little confused over this whole turn of events. They were ambushed and captured just to be led into a ballroom?

Before she can say more, though, the Doctor quietly shushes her. He meets her eyes, shakes his head and points to a staircase leading up to a control deck in front of them.

She's about to try and ask what's up, but suddenly she sees it. Sees _him_, rather. A small boy is seated against the rungs on one of the stairs, eyes closed and breathing slowly as if asleep. Rose's heart breaks a little at the child's condition; plain shorts and an oversized, scuffed blue dress shirt make him look scrawnier than she hopes he really is. Freckles stand out on his pale face, framed by a shaggy fringe and head of unruly hair. Dark circles under his closed eyes suggest he hasn't slept in days.

He isn't even sleeping now, she sees. His young face is etched with worry, looking as if he's concentrating very hard on something.

A sidelong glance at her Doctor, meant to be a silent request for him to explain what this is all about, shows him to be watching to unmoving child with a sort of animalistic wariness. She's about to open her mouth and ask what's wrong, when the doors on the far side of the room suddenly slam open and make both of them jump.

"Doctor! Oh, look at you, you ruffian! All leather jackets and gruff face!" the man who's just entered is tall, clean-shaven and oddly attractive. Rose eyes him even as she draws instinctively closer to the Doctor as the man approaches.

A noise momentarily distracts her, and she turns her head to see that the young boy from earlier has woken from whatever trance he'd been in and has apparently fallen sideways off his step. He groans irritably as he sits up, grumbling something about always being woken up, before he catches sight of the Doctor and her. He freezes in place, staring at them in horror.

"W-what!" the boy stutters. He looks back and forth from the Doctor to the oddly-handsome stranger in a suit, looking both baffled and outraged. "What are you doing? Are you _insane? _She's already struggling to maintain _one_—"

The man laughs at the child and moves towards the stairs. The boy backs up another step but stops halfway up, looking behind him at the sixth step, before the besuited man deftly catches him up around the middle and lifts him by the armpits.

"Now, now, you hush. Don't want to ruin the mystery!" the man chuckles as his young captive tries to kick him in the stomach.

"Lemme go!" the boy yells. Rose steps forward, thinking she'll get the child out of danger, but is stopped by the Doctor's hand on her shoulder. She looks back to see her alien friend staring fixedly at the two strangers with a furious expression.

"What's the meaning of this? Who are you?" he asks angrily. Rose finds herself being gently maneuvered behind her Doctor as the stranger moves toward them. The boy in his arms seems to have accepted being carried but looks supremely irritated about it.

The man laughs again, tilting his head slightly to look down at the sullen boy's face.

"Leather jacket? Really?" the man asks, conversing as if she and the Doctor aren't even there, "I never pegged you as the biker type." Getting no response from the glowering boy, the man instead squints comically at the Doctor, "or, maybe, compensating for something? Hmm?"

"What the hell are you on about?" the Doctor demands, crossing his arms. He keeps his body safely between Rose and their enigmatic captor, a fact she finds both comforting and slightly stifling. For all his posturing and talk of stupid apes, the Doctor seems to spend a lot of time treating her like a fragile china doll.

"Seriously?" the man asks, looking both amused and slightly pitying. "Try lowering that giant lead block you call a mental shield, Doctor… oh, and think fast!"

The man suddenly tosses a very startled child at him, nearly catching the Doctor off-guard. Rose lunges forward but thankfully the Doctor manages to catch the boy with a surprised '_oof!'_. He stumbles back as he supports the child in an awkward sort of bear-hug against his chest. The boy blinks up at him, and they stare at each other for maybe half a second, (the boy looking very uncomfortable to be basically smashed up against what Rose assumes to be a perfect stranger) when suddenly the Doctor lets go and drops him with a shocked gasp.

"Doctor!" Rose yells angrily. Thankfully the child doesn't seem to have been hurt by the fall.

The Doctor doesn't even seem to be aware of her. He's staring fixedly the dark-suited man, face pale as if seeing a ghost.

"Aha, figured it out finally?" the man says, his affable expression managing to be both patronizing and slightly terrifying. Rose crouches next to the startled boy on the floor, wordlessly checking to see if he's alright. For some reason the child refuses to look at her, despite her holding him in a half-hug as she tries to make sure he doesn't get scooped up again.

"You're supposed to be dead," the Doctor whispers. His face looks shell-shocked.

"Ah, yes! Bravo!" the man claps his hands a little in a mocking victory applause. Moving towards the Doctor his expression darkens, becoming almost a predatory leer. "Now, say my name."

"Master.." the Doctor says quietly.

"Hah, I like it when you say my name," the Master crows happily.

"But, you—everyone died! Everyone!" the Doctor suddenly exclaims. "I felt them!"

The Master's face darkens, a quiet anger that Rose finds deeply terrifying.

"So did I," he growls, "me, disguised as a human, stranded at the very end of time—and even then I couldn't escape. All those voices screaming, and then… nothing. Nothing at all but the drums." the Master begins drumming a four-beat tempo on the nearby railing of the staircase, his face ever darker, "it's too quiet, Doctor. I can't escape them anymore. Drumming, always, always drumming."

_Tap-tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap._

Rose feels the small child in her arms shift nervously. She looks down but can only see his fringe and part of a freckled nose. Still, she could swear he feels… guilty? Hopeless? A maelstrom of emotions that don't seem to be quite hers flow through her mind, and she draws away with a slight gasp. The boy startles as she pulls away, looking up at her for the first time with an apologetic expression.

"Sorry," he mutters quietly, dropping his eyes to the floor.

"You hid!" the Doctor exclaims angrily, Rose and the child's exchange apparently going unnoticed by the two Time Lords standing above them, "everyone, fighting for our very species' survival, and you just ran away!"

"Of course I did!" the Master replies, "I'm not a fool, unlike _you_. As soon as it was clear we were going to lose I fled as far away from Gallifrey as I could possibly get. I'm not going to die in some useless war I didn't even start. Though, I do admit I wasn't expecting you to come out of it. Of all people, Doctor!" the Master has continued to move closer as he talks, until he's standing right in front of her Doctor, looking into his eyes with a hungry look. "That one over there won't talk about it, but maybe you will. What did it feel like, Doctor? Killing them all…"

"Stop it," the Doctor growls.

"Bah!" the Master exclaims, his entire demeanour changing to that of almost comedic disappointment as he throws his hands up and rolls his eyes. "That's exactly what _he_ said! It's like you've got the market cornered on _boring._"

Rose, slightly baffled at this point—_'killing them all'? _What does _that_ mean?—gives the Doctor a quizzical look. He doesn't seem to notice her, which is disappointing, but she catches the boy glancing at her out of the corner of her eye. She leans down next to him, he still sitting rather morosely on the floor while she squats in a half-crouch a few feet away.

"You got any clue what the 'eck's goin' on?" she asks quietly, flashing a self-depreciating smile at the boy. Strange emotion-leaking or not, she feels bad for pulling away from him so suddenly earlier.

To her relief, he not only smiles back at her but finally looks at her. It's only for a second, though, as no sooner does he glance her direction than his eyes quickly move away to stare at the Master instead. She bites her lip slightly, wondering what she could have done in so short a time to make him avoid her gaze.

"It's a bit… complicated," the boy murmurs back, rubbing the back of his neck tiredly.

"Yeah?" she asks.

"I'm sorry, did I somehow give you two permission to talk behind my back?" a voice cuts in, making both of them jump. The Master is standing above them, looking stern. Rose doesn't even need to look to know that her Doctor has tensed up, ready to attack should she become endangered. _Getting over-protective again,_ she thinks. Still, she can't deny that it's comforting to know she has an ancient alien attack dog watching over her. It gives her the courage to stand up and look the Master in the eyes angrily.

"I'm sorry, did I say I needed permission from _you_ ta do anythin'? Cos I sure as hell _don't_." The man's eyes, honey-brown and almost… mystifying.. are right on the verge of freaking her out. She holds her ground though, glaring right back into them even are her knees start to shake slightly. How long have they been staring at each other…? It can't have been more than a few seconds.. but it feels like so much longer…

"Stop it!" the Doctor's voice suddenly cuts in. Rose finds herself nearly collapsing as the Master is forcibly turned away from her by the Doctor. As she falls hard on her bum the boy scrambles to steady her, looking at each of her eyes as if checking for a concussion. She can't think of why, she hasn't hit her head or anything.

"Rose? Rose! You alright?" the boy asks anxiously, waving a hand in front of her face. Rose blinks, and suddenly it's as if the whole world has come back into focus. Her head feels a bit fuzzy, but she manages to nod, putting a hand to her forehead dizzily.

She's about to ask what happened, or why a staring contest seems to have fogged out half her mind, but the first thing out of her mouth is, "how do you know my name?"

The boy gives her a slightly exasperated look and carefully brushes a strand of hair out of her face.

"Silly ape," he says quietly. Rose's breath catches at the words. It must be her slightly-muddled imagination messing with her… because she could swear she's just seen the same ancient, powerful spark in his eyes that she always thought of as being uniquely 'Doctor'.

"Doctor…?" she asks uncertainly, even though it's a fairly stupid question since she knows the Doctor is standing right next to her, with blue eyes and a leather jacket—not brown ones and freckles.

Before the boy can answer he's pulled bodily away from her by the Master. She looks frantically behind him for her Doctor only to see him surrounded by floating silver spheres, each one fitted with an array of sharp knives. He's stock still, not risking being eviscerated but obviously furious over his inability to help her.

"You're just trouble no matter what body you're in, aren't you?" the Master snarls at the boy, and tosses him aside. He's immediately encircled by metal spheres as well. The Master advances on her.

"Rose!" the boy and the Doctor both call out, voices eerily similar. The Master rolls his eyes and picks her up by the wrists.

"Talk about obsessive."

Rose struggles to kick him or bite him or anything that will make him let go, but he keeps hold of her with inhuman strength. With Time Lord strength, she now understands. The last survivor of the Doctor's species, and he just has to be a crazy super-villain. Rose could cry for the unfairness of her friend's life.

Again, she finds herself looking into a set of mesmerizing honey-brown eyes, and knows no more.

#-#

The Doctor screams with fury as Rose collapses, the Master guiding her body to the floor with false care. More of those bloody spheres appear and he instructs them to have guards remove her prone body, to take her 'somewhere more comfortable.' The Doctor attempts to charge his old nemesis and is immediately stopped by a metal ball full of knives hovering mere inches from his face.

"Stop this, Koschei!" a young voice yells the words he himself had been just about to say. The Doctor tears his eyes away from the spinning blades in front of him to see the child who, paradoxically, is his future, older self, glaring at the Master venomously.

"And why should I?" Koschei asks petulantly.

"This paradox is big enough, you'll tear the universe to shreds! Please, just send them back to their timeline, let the Blinovich Effect take over—"

"Oh, shut up," the Master cuts the older/younger Doctor off by pressing a button on his screwdriver-esque weapon. The light on a small metal band around the boy's wrist flicks from green to red and suddenly the child is screaming in pain. The Doctor himself winces, both from the screams and the very real bond present between all of his selves; faint sensations of electricity make his body tingle painfully.

"For Time's sake, he's only a child!" the Doctor exclaims after a few seconds. In answer, the Master flips a switch on his device and the pain mercifully stops, leaving the miniaturized Doctor in an unconscious heap. At a wave of their Master's hand the metal spheres surrounding the boy teleport away.

"May have over-done it a bit." The Master strides over and pokes the Doctor's future self with an immaculately polished shoe. He squats down and inspects a steady drip of blood now falling from his victim's nose, caused by having hit the floor too hard. "All over the marble, honestly."

"What's happened to you!" the Doctor asks desperately. He's angry, confused, and more than a little scared. And admittedly this incarnation does not handle any of those emotions well. "You and I are the only ones left, how can you possibly condone—"

"I _condone,_" the Master growls, standing up and rounding on the Doctor menacingly, "making the life of the destroyer of our species a living hell. A sentiment I think you would agree with, Doctor." The Master's dark features light up with an evil smirk, "Oh, I've seen the tapes. All the old records your TARDIS keeps. You had quite a period of self-destruction there, Thete. Enough that some might think you didn't _want_ to live."

"I've changed," the Doctor says firmly. His arms are crossed in front of him and he refuses to acknowledge the habit for the barrier technique it is.

"You mean someone changed you. A blonde someone," the Master crows. The Doctor can't help but wonder when exactly his enemy's moods became so mercurial. It's not like him to be so unstable, not how he remembers the orderly Time Lord at all.

"So what if she did?" the Doctor growls. The mention of Rose brings his current worry of her to the forefront, but surrounded by death-spheres he can do nothing but cross his arms and gnash his teeth angrily.

"You're dependent on her, Doctor. I can show you, even," as he speaks, the Master draws out his screwdriver device and points it at a random wall. Instantly, a projection of a rather tall man in a suit hangs in the air before them. He looks ragged, worn, and is busily running around his TARDIS console muttering equations to himself. Every once in awhile he'll stop, pull at his mop of brown hair, and flip a few switches randomly. It's obvious that this lanky pretty-boy is the Doctor's next incarnation.

"You spent three straight months trying to find a way to get your precious little pet back," the Master explains, bemusedly watching the image of his enemy talk to himself, "completely futile, and yet you worked yourself insane. And then?" the Master flips a switch and the image changes, now a low-quality feed from a surveillance camera fills the wall. The Doctor can see the same tall, wild-haired version of himself partially obscured by rushing water and flames, a murderous expression on his freckled face. The Master smiles, "then you saw fit to murder an entire nest of infant Racnoss, wiping out the species entirely. Thought you were done with genocide, hmm?"

Before the Doctor can respond, the Master flicks off his screwdriver, killing the projection. The Time Lord waves his hand and the metal spheres surrounding the Doctor disappear. He doesn't move—not sure how to react to the revelation that he will soon lose Rose and subsequently go on a murderous rampage. He tries to keep his expression neutral.

"What are you trying to get at?" the Doctor asks, crossing his arms and glaring at his enemy. Now that the spheres have gone he's having to suppress his urge to jump the other Time Lord and strangle him. The only thing keeping him still is the fact that the Master now has both Rose and his older self at his mercy.

"Typical, Doctor, missing the point as usual!" the Master chides. He spins on his heel and walks right up to the Doctor, who leans away irritably. "You," he says, poking a finger at the Doctor's leather-clad chest, "are completely dependent on a human. I intend to break that dependence. This lout over here is hopeless." The Master jerks his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the small body still crumpled on the floor, "I'm sure you can tell who was in the immediate vicinity when _he_ came into being."

"What are you going to do to Rose!" the Doctor growls, ignoring the jab at his inability to stop himself from picking up stray DNA during regeneration. It was less bother to do it that way, and he'd never really seen the point in spending his dying moments trying to come up with a nice eye colour or the particular wave of his hair.

"Oh, nothing much," the Master crows, "just break her a little, bend her to my will… remind you how useless and fragile your precious little apes are."

"Harm one hair on her head and I'll—"

The Doctor didn't get to finish his threat. The last thing he remembered was a brilliant red light shining in his face, and the thought that he really should have strangled the bastard when he had the chance.


	7. Chapter 7

_**NOTE:** And seven makes the end. Hope you enjoyed these despite the rough, unfinished nature. Thank you so much for reading!_

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><p>The Master is standing over them, gloating, laughing over his final victory and Martha's perceived failure. He sees none of it, senses only the faintest of outside stimuli as the voices within him grow louder and louder. Every human, billions around the globe are all thinking and saying and <em>believing <em>the same thing: doctor, doctor, doctor. The word echoes in his skull and with it comes their power. Meagre little wisps of psychic energy that combined begin to form a torrent.

He looks up momentarily, panting, pleased on some level to note that the Master is still talking. Making some sort of speech. Good, he needs the time. There isn't enough power yet. Still too weak to do more than deactivate the tracking bracelet on his wrist.

He waits a minute more, but it's too late. The Master has tired of his expositions and is threatening to kill Martha. Can't let her die, no, no. Not here, not in here. Too close. Desperate, the Doctor stands up from his half-slumped position. This is it. Now or never. Never, never.

Martha is laughing. She knows what is happening.

"_Koschei!_" he yells. The word reverberates around the room and all eyes are on him now. There's power. He can feel himself radiating psychic energy, giving his body and eyes an eerie glow. There's not enough to do what he needs to do. The archangel threads are too sparse. But he has backup.

Whatever reply the Master might have uttered is lost in the sudden noise of TARDIS song. She diverts all power to their link, strengthening it, widening it, and depleting herself until there's nothing left. The glow in his vision changes from a pale blue to golden, as the human energies mix with vortex power. The bracelet explodes, causing cuts to his arm which heal immediately.

There is no sight left to him but psychic, and he can sense the power of the Master like a floodlight in a crowd of candleflames. He moves forward, destroying as he goes the interior of his own ship, her energy turned against her to deactivate the paradox. Toclafane all over the globe disappear, unseen, winking out of existence. Those in the room, too close and too embroiled in vortex energy to revert, he atomizes. By the time he reaches the steps where his captor stands there are no more abominations to be found anywhere on earth.

The Master is speaking again. _What have you done, how are you doing this, no no no no._ He cannot really hear him over the rush of energy, but he knows psychically what his counterpart is feeling. Through sightless, golden eyes he looks up at his old friend and raises a still-small hand out for the weapon he carries. A surrender, that's all he wants. Surrdender, I will help you.

A flash of rage takes him by surprise. Koschei yells, screams, an inarticulate exclamation of hate. _Foiled again, always, always defeated in the end, no, no, this can't be how it ends, _and suddenly a bolt of red plasma has hit the Doctor in the chest. He stumbles backwards, blinking even as the wounds heal themselves, and looks back up at Koschei. _Why did you do that? I'm trying to help you._

"DIE!" the other Time Lord yells. Suddenly it's not just the plasma beam but a hail of bullets, as all of the hypnotized guards in the room turn their guns on their Master's enemy. It's too much, too much. The Doctor can't understand why this is happening. He can't think, doesn't know what to do except to stop the assault. The Master is controlling it. Stop the Master.

A bullet fails to be deflected off his energy shield and rips into his shoulder. He screams as the wound is repaired and suddenly nothing matters except that his is being _hurt_, and the one doing the hurting is _right there_. Swirls of vortex lift him and he charges the Master, pouring everything, everything he has into just _stopping him_, stop the bullets, stop the laser, stop the pain. He doesn't notice when his throat becomes raw. When the bruises he gave himself while tackling his enemy to the wall fail to heal. He's still screaming at the limp form in front of him, still pushing power with all his might in the direction of his tormentor, but nothing is moving. It's gone, all gone.

The screaming stops, his hands, shaking badly from muscle damage, fall to his sides as he drops to his knees. All he can hear are his own heaving breaths as he slowly, slowly reaches up to touch the face of the man in front of him. Temples, his temples! He shakily touches the psychic connector spots on the other Time Lord's face and holds his breath. _Please…_

Nothing. The Master is dead, mind ripped apart by childish, unthinking rage.

The Doctor begins to shake. He falls heavily to sit on the cold floor, staring at his fallen enemy in horrified shock. Oh god, oh Rassillon he's killed him. The only other Time Lord in the whole universe and he's killed him.

In his head the TARDIS is receding, withdrawing into herself as she assesses the damage to her structures. Her song fades to barely a whisper, and for the first time since the Time War the Doctor finds himself facing the crushing, inexorable silence of his own mind. His shaking intensifies, enough that he thinks he might fall apart at any minute. No no no it's too quiet- there's nobody, nothing, he's alone...

The feel of a hand on his shoulder barely registers, every spark of energy and concentration he has left is straining at the edges of his telepathic field, instinctively searching for some kind of contact. Time Lords weren't meant for this- from birth to death they had been connected, intertwined in a vast mesh of psychic threads linking every member of the species to their fellows. Almost but not quite a hive mind, it was what he had been born into, felt as a constant soothing hum in the back of his mind for centuries. The psychic outcry of ten million minds dying in the last moments of the Time War had killed him also, just as it destroyed every other native of Gallifrey across the universe, but then he'd regenerated. Woken up to a silence more terrifying than any sound he'd ever heard. Only his TARDIS kept him going, one last telepathic thread tethering him to sanity.

Now he can barely hear her, and it's easy to imagine himself alone. He thinks he would probably be screaming if his body weren't in shock.

The hand on his shoulder has moved and something is leaning him back, away from the Master's corpse and into something soft and warm. For just a moment skin touches skin and he feels a spark of vortex energy. It's Jack. The immortal is holding him, quietly speaking words he has no hope of understanding without the TARDIS. It doesn't matter, though. That flow of vortex energy through Jack's being which had always so unnerved him is suddenly all he can focus on. A spark of connection in the dark. It's not telepathy but it's _something_. He presses himself as tightly to the human as he can and latches on to the energy like a lifeline. Still shaking, still in shock, but the silence is gone and he finally allows himself to break down.


End file.
